Competitions FTW!
Entering competitions is rewarding for writers of all levels, as Esther Newton discovers
Esther Newton
With many writing competitions costing up to £8 or more to enter, is it really worth it? Enter three or four a month and you could find yourself spending £30 or so, with nothing to show for it. Even if you’re named as a winner or runner-up, does it lead anywhere? As a writing tutor, I hear many of my students complaining that they can’t afford to keep entering competitions and even if they do, they don’t feel they’ll get anywhere or that it’ll do anything for them.
So why enter?
As a winner of past Writing Magazineand Writers’ Newscompetitions, amongst others, I know first-hand how special writing competitions are. Doing well in a competition changes how you think about your writing. It gives it authority, whether you’re shortlisted or win. Succeeding in competitions made me realise that I could write and that if my writing was good enough to win such well-known competitions, then it was good enough to send out to editors.
Short story and novella writer Dorothy Cox, who has had stories published in several short story magazines and won a number of writing competitions, feels the same. ‘Competitions are a way of judging the worth of your writing. Opinions of friends and family are all very well but mostly they will only tell you what you would like to hear. Even having your story on a shortlist means that you must be getting something right. Having a win is even better. After competition success, I felt able to tell people that writing short stories is what I do. Recognition means that story writing isn’t something I keep quiet about and only do when no one is around.’